Thursday, March 06, 2008

Oh, Liberals. Almost two years later, and still on the same old tirade? Honestly, if you really have nothing newer to slam the NDP and the Bloc with than "you guys kicked us out back in November of 2005, thereby giving the voters the chance to pick somebody they liked better," then they must be doing something right.

The best part, though, has got to be the wording. The House of Commons is being asked to "condemn the irresponsible and self-serving actions on Nov. 25, 2005 by the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois which led to the installation of a government that is hostile to the rights and needs of vulnerable Canadians" (emphasis mine). Liberal governments are elected, but other kinds of governments--those are installed. Because if anybody gets in but the Liberals, there must have been some terrible mistake. Like a coup d'état, maybe, or a seekrit scandal involving millions of forged ballots.

If this were happening just a few weeks later, I'd swear it was an April Fool's joke. They're at the point where they're writing Rick Mercer's material for him.

10 comments:

Well, see, Bob, the Liberals--they're Canada's Natural Governing Party. That means all the other parties are simple interlopers with mere delusions of grandeur. So when those other parties undertook the scandalous act of defeating a Liberal minority government and giving Canadians the chance to vote somebody else in, they were committing high treason. And that kind of treasonous act deserves to be punished two and a half years later with a motion in parliament.

The so-called natural governing party, its sense of entitlement so immense, simply cannot be brought round to accepting responsibility for its own failures. When it loses an election due to its weak and dithering leadership, its lackluster campaign and general untrustworthiness, what does it do? It blames the small third party, of course.

I wonder who the Liberal Party will blame for its present shortcomings? The Canada Action Party? Or perhaps the Marijuana Party? How nice it must be never to have to be responsible.

The Liberal Party has a lot of gall tabling this kind of motion at this particular time—the day after it voted in support of Bill C-484, a pernicious bit of legislation designed to chip away at a woman’s right to choose. And in the same week that it voted in support of the Conservative Party’s impecunious budget. The gall is even more appalling when one considers that Liberal MP wannabe Gerard Kennedy was recently in my riding lecturing us on the Liberal Party’s plan to set targets for the elimination of poverty in Canada! Presumably, this time they really mean it. My goodness! My god!

You certainly have the right to do whatever you want with your vote, and you won't see me chewing you out if you choose not to give it to the NDP next time. If you want to blame yourself for ushering in the Harper era, though, all logic says that doesn't make much sense unless you voted Conservative.

In any case, I would argue that the NDP isn't different at all from how they were two years ago, and in fact I'm quite happy about that. They were coming up with policies I mostly agreed with then, and they're still doing so now. I cast my vote for policies I agree with, see, not against policies I disagree with. I come from a country where there are no left-wing parties at all, and I came to Canada in the first place so that it would finally be possible for me to vote for candidates and policies that I can really believe in. I refuse to apologize for that, ever.

I agree completely that this Liberal motion is stupid and insulting. If the Liberals don't want an election now, they should just take the heat that is dished out. If they really do have a strategy for unseating Harper they will be vindicated and if they don't, they deserve whatever is thrown at them. Putting forward meaningless motions will only hurt them in either case.

Anon, as someone who voted NDP in 2006 and previous elections, I really don't think you can blame the NDP for the outcome. Each person votes as they feel is best.

Of course, I regret that Harper is our PM and, having lived through 8 years of Mike Harris, I recognize the great difficulty in unseating someone who has a strategy which I see as deceitful and manipulative but which is received as popularist and decisive. Personally, I no longer see the NDP as recognizing this or giving sufficient priority to unseating Harper. Every party is obviously focussed on winning as many seats as possible for their party. The NDP has the more difficult position in that winning more seats could coexist with increased seats for Harper as well, if they can reinforce Harper's attacks on the Liberals while not being seen as supporting Harper. I've been watching Layton and the NDP statements closely over the past year and that is the strategy I observe. This hit a peak around the Throne Speech time when one could see that one photo of Dion shrugging with "not a leader" slogans plastered over both the NDP and CPC websites.

As I really like the Liberal candidate running in my riding, I plan to vote Liberal next time around, almost independent of what is happening federally. In the Canadian system, it makes sense to vote based on your local candidates. This will encourage parties to find good candidates and encourage MPs to represent their constituents. However, I also think the Liberals have the best chance of replacing Harper.

Actually, the Liberals don't have much of a chance at all of replacing Harper alone. If they can win a decent number of seats from the Conservatives in the next election, though, and the NDP either stays as strong as they currently are or gains a few seats, then a Liberal-NDP (or NDP-Liberal) coalition government could quite conceivably do it.

Don't say it's not possible, either, 'cause it is. You can bet that if the next election's outcome makes the numbers add up to that, they'll be considering it. They're even sicker of minority governments than we are.